Helping child catch up academically
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Anonymous
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How can I help my daughter catch up? She fell behind terribly during the pandemic and struggled to learn to read. We got her an specialty tutor and now she reads okay.
She is still behind academically though especially in math. She was diagnosed with an attention disorder and is now on methylphenidate. She also has trouble retaining information and has an IEP. She also attends Mathnasium twice a week but I'm not sure it's doing any good. Her grades are terrible and she is pretty much failing every class in the 4th grade but the school will probably pass her on to the next grade anyway. I'm not sure what else to do. Are there any other avenues that I'm missing that may help her? |
Anonymous
| Have you done a full neuropsych evaluation, or just an ADHD diagnosis through her doctor? If you haven't done the full evaluation I would to make sure there's not something like a processing disorder as well. |
Anonymous
| SRA Direct instruction |
Anonymous
| I was also going to say testing. After a certain point, COVID is t enough of an explanation for being behind so long ts important to identify the cause of the delay. |
Anonymous
| We did workbooks almost daily, lots of apps and at that age worked on math facts. Covid is a bad excuse given schools have been back in person several years. Get a good evaluation to see what’s going on. |
Anonymous
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My DS is in 4th as well w/an IEP. At the suggestion of his Dev. Ped., I changed my mindset from "catching up" to "steadily progressing". As long as my DS is steadily progressing, we will keep the current supports in place, but I don't expect him to learn faster than other children so that he can catch up.
It's looking at both the external and internal benchmarks. You can be aware that they are behind, but also celebrate improvement from where they were. I second the idea of additional testing. Schools only assess impacts in the education setting, a Dev. Ped. will look at the whole child and help with ideas for support or justifications for more at school. |
Anonymous
This. If she has had a full evaluation, contact the person who did it, or schedule a consult with a new provider, to ask about "catching up". If she has not had one, get one. If they are too expensive you can start with an evaluation through the school system. She may have LD or other disabilities that are affecting her learning. Agree that at some point blaming the pandemic doesn't make sense anymore. |
Anonymous
+2. As a mom of an ADHDer and former teacher, things aren’t adding up. You need a neuropsych evaluation to look for LDs like dyscalculia and to determine IQ and processing speed. If you have had this, then you need to reevaluate whether she is properly medicated. ADHDers can make careless mistakes in Math which can lead to bad grades. You need to find out what the teacher thinks. Is she making careless mistakes, unable to grasp concepts, or zoning out during Math (because it is a non preferred activity)? |
Anonymous
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Also recommend full neuropsych testing panel (it’s 3.5 days) or following up with the provider Who administered it if you already had one.
Good luck!! |
Anonymous
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I'm a 1:1 para working with a MS kid who's parents want them to "catch up". We work hard, but they are not catching up, and probably will never catch up. Their parents refuse to get any testing done.
They have real strengths, but also have real deficits they need to learn to compensate for. We can only guess at where we can make a difference, through a lot of trial and error. (Some days I want to pull my hair out for lack of parental awareness!) Please get your kid thoroughly tested so you have a good idea what's going on and why. That will inform the IEP. Good luck! |